The matron glared at Bertha Cool, then quietly withdrew.
“Sit down,” Sellers said to Bertha Cool. “Let’s see, you wanted a cigarette. Here’s one.”
He opened a fresh package of cigarettes, and handed Bertha one. He fished a black, moist cigar from his waistcoat pocket, clipped off the end, shoved it in his mouth, and, for the moment, made no effort to light it.
“Something about this music box,” he said.
“Indeed?”
“You went to it, opened it, then closed it and left. You didn’t take anything out. I wonder if you put something in.”
Sellers took a magnifying glass from his drawer, went over the music box carefully, inspecting both the works and the case, looking for some place of concealment which might harbour some bit of planted evidence: When he could find none, he dosed the music box, studied the outside of it, and looked at the portrait of the young woman. “I wonder if this is it.”
“What?”
“The portrait. It isn’t a missing heiress, is it?”
Bertha, feeling remarkably good after winning her verbal encounter with the matron settled back in her chair and laughed.
“Why the laughter?”
“Thinking of the nineteenth-century beauty,” Bertha said. “A chunky, mealy-mouthed nincompoop who wore corsets and fainted at the faintest suggestion of salty humour. And you think I’d come all the way from—”
“Yes, yes,” Sergeant Sellers said as Bertha stopped. “You interest me now. All the way from where, Mrs. Cool?”
Bertha clamped her lips tightly shut.
“Almost told me something, didn’t you?” Sergeant Sellers said.
Bertha, realizing how close she had come to saying, “All the way from Riverside,” contented herself with puffing placidly away at her cigarette, atoning for what was almost a verbal slip by maintaining a rigid silence.
Sergeant Sellers looked at the big clock over the desk. “Ten minutes past two,” he mused. “It’s rather late, but then — this probably is an emergency.”
He consulted the label on the inside of the music box, studied a telephone directory, then picked up the receiver, said, “Give me an outside line,” and dialled a number.
After a few moments, he said suavely, “I’m very sorry about having to call you at this hour. This is Sergeant Sellers speaking from police headquarters, and the reason I’m calling is because I’m trying to trace an important clue in a murder case. Is this Britten G. Stellman? It is, eh? Well, I want you to tell me whether you can remember a music box, one of the old-fashioned kind with a metal comb and a cylinder — has a picture of a landscape on one side and the portrait of a girl on the other, plays ‘Bluebells of Scotland,’ and — oh, I see — you do, eh? Yes. What was her name? Josephine Dell, eh?”
Sergeant Sellers was silent for several seconds, listening to the voice which came over the telephone; then he said, “All right, now let me see if I’ve got this straight. This Josephine Dell came in about a month ago, saw this music box, and said she’d like to get it but didn’t have enough money to pay for it. She left a small deposit to hold it for ninety days. Then she rang you up on Wednesday, told you she had the money available, and that she was sending it to you by telegram. She asked you to deliver the music box by messenger to this blind man without saying anything about who sent it; just to tell him that it was a present from a friend — that right?”
Again Sergeant Sellers was silent for several moments while he was listening; then he said, “Okay. One more question. Where was that telegram sent from? Redlands, eh? You don’t know whether she lives in Redlands? Oh, I see. Lives in Los Angeles and you think she just happened to be travelling through Redlands. You don’t think that she’s any relation t’ this blind man, didn’t say anything about that? Just saw the one time when she was in and paid the deposit, eh? Say where she was working? I see. All right, thanks a lot. I wouldn’t have called you at this hour if it hadn’t been a major emergency. I can assure you your co-operation is appreciated. Yes, this is Sergeant Sellers of Homicide. I’ll drop in and see you next time I’m in the neighbourhood and thank you personally. In the meantime, if anything turns up, give me a ring. All right, thanks. Good-bye.”
Sergeant Sellers hung up the telephone, turned to Bertha Cool, and looked her over as though he were seeing her for the first time.
“Rather cute,” he said.
“I don’t get it.”
Sergeant Sellers said, “I am just wondering, Mrs. Cool, if that collect telephone call you received this afternoon didn’t come from Redlands.”
“It certainly did not,” Bertha assured him.
“You’ll pardon me if I make a little investigation of that.”
“Go ahead. Investigate all you want to.”
“I don’t think you understand me, Mrs. Cool. During the investigation I am going to make, it’s going to be necessary for me to have you where I can find you.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean exactly what I say.”
“You mean you’re going to put me under surveillance?”
“Oh, that would be an unnecessary expense to the city, Mrs. Cool. I wouldn’t think of doing anything like that. And besides, it would inconvenience you so much.”
“Well, what do you mean then?”
“If you were travelling around, going here and there, wherever you wanted to go, it would cause us a lot of trouble to keep track of you; but if you stayed in one place, it wouldn’t be at all difficult.”
“You mean my office?”
“Or mine.”
“Just what do you mean?”
“Well, I thought that if you stayed here for a while it might simplify matters.”
“You can’t hold me in custody that way.”
“Certainly not,” Sellers said. “I would be the first one to admit that, Mrs. Cool.”
“Well?” she said triumphantly.
“Just a moment,” he cautioned as she started to get up out of the chair. “I can’t hold you on that, but I certainly can hold you on breaking into that house tonight. That’s a felony.”
“But I didn’t take anything.”
“We can’t be entirely certain of that as yet.”
“I’ve been searched.”
“But you might have managed to get rid of whatever you had taken, or you might have been intending to commit a felony. Do you know, Mrs. Cool, I think I’ll hold you a little while longer on that charge, and there are a couple of other things I’d like to look up.”
“Such as what?” Bertha demanded indignantly.
“Well, for instance, the way you left your office this afternoon. You went down and took a streetcar on Seventh Street. You got out just above Grand Avenue. My two plain-clothes men who were following you thought they had a cinch. You were on foot, apparently depending on streetcars. The man who was driving the car dropped the detective who was with him, and drove around the block so he could come back and slide in at a space opposite a fire plug which he’d spotted as he drove down the street just before you got off the streetcar. And then your automobile came along and picked you up and whisked you away just as neatly as though you’d been engineering a sleight-of-hand trick.”
Sergeant Sellers pressed the bell which summoned the matron. When she arrived in the office, he said, “Mrs. Bell, Mrs. Cool is going to be with us, at least until morning. Will you try to make her comfortable?”
The matron’s smile held the triumph of cold malice. “I will be a pleasure, Sergeant,” she said, and then, turning beligerently to Bertha, “Come with me, dearie.”